THE HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENT

NEWTIME Magazine, GermanyJune, 1995

Wolfgang Kovacek interviews Hawaiian politician "Bumpy" Kanahele

How do you see the Hawaiian way of life at this point in time and what can you do for it?

Well, the culture is alive and growing. Today a lot of people live by, and practice our culture, religion, language and arts. We are already protecting our culture, by claiming our independence and restoring the Hawaii Constitution.

Do you have special plans to support cultural projects or culture in general?

Yes, we do. In fact, we already have a budget plan. We have cost analyses for agriculture, etc. We are starting fish ponds, and we have a whole set-up of plans on every island, also hospitals.

How does the model of selfsustaining communities fit into your picture of the Hawaiian state?

If you look at the U.S. Public Law, and if you read the first paragraph of the apology bill, you can read how special the Hawaiian people were. They lived in a self-sufficient social system based on communal land tenure, with a sophisticated language, religion and culture. So, we are used to self-sufficiency, and sustainable technologies, which they talk about today because we had our eco-system then. I think we are the pioneers of sustainable technologies. The modern sustainable technologies which are available today can help us clean up the environment again and get back to the way it was. Personally, to tell you how deeply I feel about cleaning up the environment, I would take all the coal and put it back into the earth, and I would take all the oil in the world and do the same thing.

What can be done, in your view, to promote exchanges of culture, tourism and information between Hawaii and Europe?

We had that - a long time ago. We were recognized by all European countries as an independent nation. So what we need now is not just exchanges, but to have the governments of these countries recognize our independence and the legitimate constitution of Hawaii. That's more important than exchanges. We are serious about independence. It is the only way to go. Austria has its independence, other countries have theirs - ours was stolen. My question to the European peoples is, shall we open up the treaties again that we have with countries like Austria, Finland, Germany, etc.?

How do believe economics and ecology can come together and finally become one?

In order for a country to prosper, the individuals themselves as citizens have to prosper financially. In our situation, what we have to take care of is economic stability, and the only way to do that is to understand about the money that flows around. The U.S. Dollar no longer has the value that it had before. It used to be backed by silver and gold, and now it's backed by somebody's assets. What we would like to do for our economic situation is go back to being a tax haven, go back to substance banking. Hawaii can do that. It would attract billions and trillions of dollars as an offshore bank for other countries. I believe that should be taken care of right away because once we do that we can do anything to take care of the ecological problems.

So your way of solving that problem would be: first get the economy right by means of offshore banking, so that the money can come in, and then the ecology?

It's not just the banks, but once the economic situation looks up, we shall have more time for the ecological situation. We need to take care of the individual, the people, now. The only way to do that is to educate them.

Is the sovereignty movement only political, or does it also connect with the sovereignty of the human being and the soul?

It's not just political. Although, you see, "political" means having a voice - the voice of a people that wants independence, free association, or integration. If politics is without a voice, the economy, society and culture cannot work. It is a whole, a balance of the whole person, the whole human being that we are talking about, and about the rights of that human being.

One last question. What do you think about children and their importance for the future, and the family?

The children are our love. The children are the truth. The children are the future. Since there has been a communication gap between the generations, we have to close that gap among ourselves and with the children of the future - which we are doing. We work a lot with the children and with our elders, and we are starting to bring the generations closer together.